A wireless communication system may generally comprise a group of subscribers and a set of stationary “base radios” (also known as “repeaters”). The subscribers are typically endpoints of a communication path taking place on a channel resource, e.g. a voice channel, of the wireless communication system and repeaters are typically the intermediaries by which the communication path to a subscriber may be established or maintained. There may be a number of communications taking place in the wireless communication system. One type of communication, called a talkgroup call, allows a user of one subscriber to speak while other subscribers listen. The group of subscribers participating in the talkgroup call are called the talkgroup. Because of the number of communications taking place in the wireless communication system, a user may wish to participate in one talkgroup call while monitoring other communications.
As is known, one way to participate in one talkgroup call while monitoring a second talkgroup is to use embedded signaling to indicate priority talkgroups. Because embedded signaling is used to implement this approach, the performance of the wireless communication system may degrade. To avoid performance degradation and to facilitate the ability to participate in one talkgroup call while monitoring other communications requires that the channel resources in the wireless communication system be allocated in such a way to facilitate the ability. Accordingly, there is a need for a new way of allocating channel resources in a wireless communication system.
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